Ethnic differences in subclinical paranoia: an expansion of norms of the paranoia scale

The Paranoia Scale (PS) was designed to assess subclinical paranoid ideation (A. Fenigstein & P. A. Vanable, 1992). Despite its established validity, the PS has several problems that need to be addressed. There are no normative data on ethnic minority groups such as African Americans, making it difficult to interpret this group's performance on the PS. Data from the present research revealed that African Americans scored higher on the PS than non-Hispanic Whites. However, interpretation of these findings should be tempered as they may reflect other contextual factors such as discrimination and the impact of racism. Implications for using the PS with African Americans and possible explanations for the observed results were discussed.